If you are looking for inspiration for grid and column design, here is a nice collection of 32 column-based websites. These sites show how grid layout can be applied on various type of sites — whether a massive content editorial site or just a personal blog. Check out how the layout can be divided into 3 columns, 4 columns, a mixture of narrow and wide columns.

Editorial Sites

First let’s check out some of the famous editorial sites. Can you imagine how these sites would be organized without a grid system due to their massive content?

The New York Times

National Post

Guardian

Times Online

Frieze Magazine

Wired News

The Morning News

Porfolio

We Are Survival Machines

UX Magazine

Grid in blog design

Here are some of the blogs that adapted the grid style. I have to specially mention Khoi Vinh, who played the big part in grid web design.

AI Alex

5 Thirty One

Subtraction

Astheria

Jeff Croft

Hell Yeah Dude

Jon Tangerine

Mark Boulton Design

The Technology Herald

Gapers Block

Break out of the box

Column design doesn’t mean you have to be within the box. See how you can break out of the box by using images to form unsymmetrical shapes.

UC Berkeley

J R Velasco

Chrizdee

AIGA Los Angeles

Columns on eye-catchy background

Getting bored of the white background? Here are some good samples of column layout on graphical background.

31Three

A Tennessee Winter

Sundance Film Festival

Ungarbage

Boxes and Columns

Content can also be organized into evenly distributed columns and rows.

168 Comments

It’s interesting how designs are changing to reflect the new social phenomenon. Hard corporate design is giving way to a more casual almost friendly blog type style. The question is, does this have a measurable effect on the businesses concerned?